GAA16CA326 · Schweizer Aircraft Corp G 164 B
Sky Tractor Schweizer Aircraft Corp G 164 B · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Deck Airport (5ND9) to Deck Airport (5ND9)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA326
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Schweizer Aircraft Corp G 164 B
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer G-164
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N36333
- Operator
- Sky Tractor
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deck Airport (5ND9), Cummings, NDTo Deck Airport (5ND9), Cummings, ND
- Aircraft age
- About 30 years (built 1986)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 137: Agricultural
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Landing area undershoot
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped turbine powered airplane reported that while landing, he reduced the power and there was an increased descent rate. The pilot added power but reported that the engine rpm did not have time to accelerate. The airplane touched down about 10 feet short of the runway in tall grass, the right main landing gear sheared off during the impact, the nose of the airplane dropped and the propeller impacted the ground. The airplane rotated to the left and came to a stop in a ditch, sustaining substantial damage to both the wings and their lift struts.
The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported as a safety recommendation, to allow plenty of runway space in case of a sudden increase in descent rate while landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain an adequate rate of descent while landing, which resulted in a hard landing, short of the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA326
- Event ID
- 20160623X65115
- Case number
- GAA16CA326
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4e0ebb80aae7a0d175e517e33661a3e237308cc8636b9bdc84d60aa7585c8e61; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:32:53.832Z.